Holkham Hall facts for kids
Holkham Hall is a large country house built in the 1700s. It is located near the village of Holkham in Norfolk, England. The house was built in a style called Neo-Palladian for the first Earl of Leicester. The main architects were William Kent and Lord Burlington.
Holkham Hall is one of England's best examples of the Palladian style. Its design is very close to the original ideas of the Italian architect Palladio. The land for the Holkham Estate was first bought by Sir Edward Coke in 1609. The Coke family, who later became Earls of Leicester, still live here today.
The inside of the house is very grand but also simply decorated. The main entrance is through the Marble Hall. This hall is actually made of pink alabaster, a type of stone. It leads to the main floor, where the most important rooms are. The Saloon is one of the most impressive rooms, with walls covered in red velvet. Many rooms have a balanced design, even using fake doors to make everything look perfectly even.
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Who Built Holkham Hall?
Holkham Hall was built by Thomas Coke, who was born in 1697. He was a very rich and educated man. When he was young, he traveled around Europe for six years. This trip, called the Grand Tour, happened between 1712 and 1718. It is likely he met Lord Burlington and William Kent in Italy in 1715. In Italy, they probably came up with the idea for Holkham Hall.
Thomas Coke returned to England with many books, art, and sculptures. He planned to use these to decorate his new house. However, he also enjoyed gambling and hunting. He lost a lot of money in a bad investment in 1720. This delayed the building of Holkham Hall for over ten years. Thomas Coke became the Earl of Leicester in 1744. He died in 1759, five years before the house was finished. His wife, Lady Margaret Tufton, made sure the house was completed and furnished.
The Palladian Style of Architecture
The Palladian style was becoming popular again in England during this time. It was based on the ideas of Andrea Palladio, an Italian architect from the 1500s. The style had been seen in England before, but then the Baroque style became more popular. The "Palladian revival" of the 1700s was inspired by Palladio's work. However, it did not always follow his strict rules. This style later developed into what is known as Georgian architecture. Holkham Hall is special because it follows Palladio's original ideas more closely than most other houses.
Architects and Their Roles
While Thomas Coke oversaw the project, he gave the daily building tasks to Matthew Brettingham. Brettingham was the local architect for the estate. He was paid £50 a year to look after the buildings. He also helped design the house, though he said Thomas Coke designed the Marble Hall himself.
William Kent was mostly in charge of the inside design of the family wing. He created many different ideas for the outside of the house, but Coke wanted a simpler look. Brettingham called building Holkham "the great work of [my life]". When he published a book about the house, he said he was the only architect. However, his son later admitted that the main idea came from the Earls of Leicester and Burlington, with help from William Kent.
Building Holkham Hall began in 1734. It took 30 years to finish, with the house being completed in 1764.
How Holkham Hall Was Designed
The Palladian style was liked by people like Thomas Coke. They wanted to connect themselves with the Romans of old times. William Kent designed the outside of Holkham Hall. He based his design on a villa by Palladio that was never built.
Holkham Hall has a large central part with two floors. This central part contains many grand rooms arranged in a balanced way around two courtyards. You cannot see these courtyards from the outside. They are there to let light into the house. This main block is connected to four smaller, rectangular blocks, called wings. These wings are linked to the main house by short, two-story sections.
The Outside Look
The outside of Holkham Hall looks like a huge Roman palace. However, it is very plain and does not have much decoration. This was probably Thomas Coke's idea. The architect Matthew Brettingham said that Coke wanted "comfort." This meant that if one window gave enough light, there was only one. A second window might have made the room cold or drafty, even if it looked better from the outside.
Because of this, the few windows on the main floor look small against the large brick walls. The yellow bricks used were made to look exactly like old Roman bricks. Above these windows, where there would usually be smaller windows, there is nothing. This is because the main rooms inside are very tall. Even fake windows, which Palladio often used, were not allowed to break up the plain look. On the ground floor, the walls look rough, with small windows that some people have said look like a prison.
The main front of the house, facing south, is 344 feet (104.9 meters) long. Its plainness is broken only by a large entrance with six columns. Each end of the central part has a small section with a special Venetian window. This window has a square tower and a capped roof above it.
The four wings on the sides of the house hold service rooms and family areas. Each wing looks the same from the outside. They have three sections, each with a plain triangular top called a pediment. One of these wings was designed to be a separate house. This allowed the family to live there when the main rooms were not in use.
The Inside Look
Inside Holkham Hall, the Palladian style is very grand. It has been called "The finest Palladian interior in England." The inside is grand without too much decoration. This shows William Kent's love for "the beauty of a plain surface." Work on the inside rooms took place from 1739 to 1773. The family wing rooms were ready by 1740. The Long Library was finished in 1741. The chapel was one of the last rooms to be completed, overseen by Lady Leicester.
You enter the house through the Marble Hall. This room is over 50 feet (15 meters) tall. It has a wide flight of white marble steps leading to a gallery. Here, columns made of alabaster support the golden ceiling. These columns are thought to be copies of those from an ancient Roman temple. Around the hall are statues, mostly plaster copies of old gods.
The steps from the hall lead to the main floor and the grand rooms. The most important room, the Saloon, is right behind the main entrance. Its walls are covered in red patterned fabric. A famous painting by Peter Paul Rubens called Return from Egypt hangs here. Thomas Coke also collected many Roman copies of Greek and Roman sculptures. These are displayed in the long Statue Gallery, which runs through the house.
The North Dining Room is a square room, 27 feet (8.2 meters) on each side. It has a carpet that perfectly matches the ceiling design. A statue of Aelius Verus is in a special spot in this room. A curved section in the room gives it a temple-like feel. This curved section also hides secret passages that lead to the distant kitchens.
Each corner of the main house has a square room with a large Venetian window. One of these, the Landscape Room, has paintings by Claude Lorrain and Gaspar Poussin. All the main rooms have balanced walls, even if it means having fake doors to make them look even. The main rooms also have beautiful marble fireplaces with carvings. Much of the furniture was designed by William Kent.
The decoration in the main rooms is quite simple. This meant that the smaller, private rooms in the family wing could be decorated in a similar way without being too much. The Long Library in the family wing still holds the books Thomas Coke bought on his trip to Italy. There, he saw the Palladian villas that inspired Holkham.
The Green State bedroom is the main bedroom. It is decorated with paintings and tapestries. It is said that when Queen Mary visited, a painting of Jupiter Caressing Juno was moved to the attic because it was thought to be unsuitable for her to see.
The Grounds of Holkham Hall
Work on the park began in 1729, even before the house was built. This was marked by the building of an obelisk in 1730. It is 80 feet (24 meters) tall and stands on the highest point in the park. It is located over half a mile south of the house and lines up with its center. A long avenue of trees stretches for over a mile south of the obelisk. Thousands of trees were planted on what was once open, windy land. By 1770, the park covered 1,500 acres (6.1 km²).
Other buildings in the garden designed by William Kent include the Triumphal Arch. This was designed in 1739 but finished in 1752. There is also a domed temple in the woods near the obelisk, built between 1730 and 1735. Above the main entrance inside the Marble Hall, there is an inscription that says:
THIS SEAT, on an open barren Estate
Was planned, planted, built, decorated.
And inhabited the middle of the XVIIIth Century
By THO's COKE EARL of LEICESTER
Under Coke of Norfolk, who was the great-nephew of the builder, the park was greatly improved. By his death in 1842, it had grown to its current size of over 3,000 acres (12 km²). Besides planting over a million trees, Coke also hired architect Samuel Wyatt. Wyatt designed many farm buildings and farmhouses in a simple classical style. In the 1780s, new walled kitchen gardens covering 6 acres (24,000 m²) were also created. His wife, "Mrs Coke," hired Humphry Repton, who created a book of ideas for the Holkham landscape. The gardens are west of the lake and include various greenhouses. Wyatt's designs ended around 1790 with the Great Barn.
The lake to the west of the house was once a marshy area connected to the North Sea. It was created between 1801 and 1803 by the landscape gardener William Eames.
After his death, Coke of Norfolk was honored with the Leicester Monument. It was designed by William Donthorne and built between 1845 and 1848. It cost the estate's tenants £4,000. The monument is a 120-foot (37 meter) tall column. It has a sculpture of a wheatsheaf on top and carvings showing farming tools and animals. Coke's work helped increase farm production. This caused the estate's rental income to grow from £2,200 in 1776 to £20,000 in 1816. His methods greatly influenced farming in Britain.
In 1850, Thomas Coke, 2nd Earl of Leicester, hired architect William Burn to build new stables east of the house. Work also started on the terraces around the house. This work continued until 1857. It included a large fountain of Saint George and the Dragon south of the house. To the east, Burn designed a large stone orangery, which is now roofless.
Holkham Today
Building Holkham Hall cost around £90,000. This huge cost almost financially ruined the first Earl's heirs. However, it also meant they could not afford to change the house much later on. Because of this, the house has stayed almost the same since it was finished in 1764.
Today, this beautiful example of Palladian architecture is still the center of a large private estate. The estate covers about 25,000 acres (100 km²). Holkham Hall is still the family home of the Earls of Leicester of Holkham. It is also open to the public on certain days.
See also
- Art collections of Holkham Hall
- Noble Households – a book with a list of items at Holkham Hall from 1760
Images for kids
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A robot for kids.
